The average international trade transaction is subject to numerous procedural and documentation requirements, which add to the costs of doing business as an importer or exporter and also use up scarce government resources. While these requirements can be necessary to fulfil policy objectives,...

Trade in health products has been flourishing in recent years as the demand for better health has been growing throughout the world. At the same time, trade in health products is hampered by substantive trade barriers. In this paper, we present evidence that countries around the world still...

The study identifies outstanding issues and bottlenecks and provides recommendations to facilitate the Philippines' full compliance to its commitments to the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Various in-depth interviews and surveys were conducted with concerned stakeholders from government...

It has become increasingly common to produce goods in a number of geographically dispersed stages linked by international trade. This tendency, known by names such as "production fragmentation", "processing trade", and "vertical specialization", has important implications for the analysis of...

Understanding trade costs is essential for formulating policy interventions designed to reduce such costs. This report synthesises all OECD work on cost factors across the entire trade chain. These factors can be located behind the border, such as non-tariff regulatory measures, market access...

As tariffs are increasingly being reduced, trade economists and policymakers have begun to emphasize the importance of reducing non-tariff trade costs to facilitate international trade flows. However, the measurement of trade costs and transport costs, in particular, is not an easy task. For...